re couples, his speculative eye seemed to show, he didn't even
yet know about, and if he mentally took them up a moment it was all
promptly to drop them. "I don't think you state it quite strongly
enough, you know."

"That Mitchy IS hard hit? He states it so strongly himself that it
will surely do for both of us. I'm a part of what I just spoke of--his
indifference and magnificence. It's as if he could only afford to do
what's not vulgar. He might perfectly marry a duke's daughter, but that
WOULD be vulgar--would be the absolute necessity and ideal of nine out
of ten of the sons of shoemakers made ambitious by riches. Mitchy says
'No; I take my own line; I go in for a beggar-maid.' And it's only
because I'm a beggar-maid that he wants me."

"But there are plenty of other beggar-maids," Mr. Longdon objected.

"Oh I admit I'm the one he least dislikes. But if I had any money,"
Nanda went on, "or if I were really good-looking--for that to-day, the
real thing, will do as well as being a duke's daughter--he wouldn't come
near me. And I think that ought to settle it. Besides, he must marry
Aggie. She's a beggar-maid too--as well as an angel. So there's nothing
against it."

Mr. Longdon stared, but even in his surprise seemed to take from
the swiftness with which she made him move over the ground a certain
agreeable glow. "Does 'Aggie' like him?"

"She likes every one. As I say, she's an angel--but a real, real, real
one. The kindest man in the world's therefore the proper husband for
her. If Mitchy wants to do something thoroughly nice," she declared with
the same high competence, "he'll take her out of her situation, which is
awful."

Mr. Longdon looked graver. "In what way awful?"

"Why, don't you know?" His eye was now cold enough to give her, in her
chill, a flurried sense that she might displease him least by a graceful
lightness. "The Duchess and Lord Petherton are like you and me."

"Is it a conundrum?" He was serious indeed.

"They're one of the couples who are invited together." But his face
reflected so little success for her levity that it was in another tone
she presently added: "Mitchy really oughtn't." Her friend, in silence,
fixed his eyes on the ground; an attitude in which there was something
to make her strike rather wild. "But of course, kind as he is, he can
scarcely be called particular. He has his ideas--he thinks nothing
matters. He says we've all come to a pass that's the end of everything."